Does you homeschool organization’s board meeting always seem to focus on minor details and irritations? Do you lack direction and forward thinking?
Nonprofit guru TomOkarma shares some great ideas for you board members in Board Presidents That Don’t Bore
He recommends taking 10 minutes at the beginning of your next board meeting and asked questions like:
- If we were starting up our organization today brand new, what would it look like?
- Would we recreate what we have now, or create something that looks different?
- Say we just came off the most successful year we ever had from programming, fund development and organizational standpoints. What key steps or decisions did the board make resulting in these great results?
- If we could do one thing right now that would improve our organization (whether internally or externally in our service delivery) and neither time nor money was an issue, what would that be?
- Ask each member to explain your organization’s history, mission, and programs. It will be a good test!
- Pretend it was the worst year ever – what happened and how do we right the ship?
- How about using the approach “Here’s what the organization is trying to achieve. In the past, it has achieved “A”, “B” and “C” in this way. It has not been able to achieve “D”, “E” and “F”. What do you think we should do in order to achieve these things?
Those ought to generate some discussion! You may have to set a timer to stop the idea flow and get down to business!
Or set aside an evening or a weekend to organize a board retreat and discuss these questions.
If you don’t have a board, make that a goal. My book Homeschool Co-ops: How to Start Them, Run Them and Not Burn Out will help you find members to help you lead your group.
And later in 2015 I hope to offer a new resource to help you motivate every member of your homeschool organization…details to come!
Carol Topp, CPA